“Working directly on site, in front of the trees, I engage in an encounter experience which is essential to creative process. Deeper aspects of awareness are activated to the extent that the artist is committed to the encounter with subject. This is why working exclusively from photographs or calendar pictures often fall short of achieving genuine creativity- there is no quality of emotion or engagement with the reality of the subject. What develops from an intensity of encounter is joy- the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one’s own potentialities.”